Not funny: DRAMATIC!


I saw this movie yesterday and I was SHOCKED. It's on the verge of being immoral to call this a comedy, in my opinion! YES, there are 3 or 4 scenes made to laugh (like the father's dream, or some scenes with his new girlfriend/prostitute), but the rest are very dramatic!
I mean... what the hell is funny about a guy beating his wife? Shooting his son? Raping the wife of another one of his son?
I am a person with a very dark sense of humour, and I believe I am very open minded, but this really isn't what I could call something even similar to "funny"!

Actually, I am a student in a cinema school, and I know some teachers here that REFUSE to see the whole movie, as they say it's utterly un-ethical.

Oh, and I still am asking myself: what kind of people laugh at scenes where rape is banalised?

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I agree with you to a point. I saw this movie when it was released (circa 1976 I think). I went to the movies with a friend of mine to watch "Close encounters of the 3rd kind" and it was sold out, so we proceeded to see this one in a small studio room in the same cinema. We were fascinated by it and we actually saw it twice that day.

The film made a lot of sense in that time (as it does, unfortunatelly today) and maybe it was easier for a director than to make such a thing. I dont't see it at all as a comedy, but as a somewhat accurate portrait of reality.

I don't understand why your teachers don't see it. If they don't see it, how do they know thay "can't see it"?

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I think this movie is a masterpiece, this is not at all a comedy, this is a portrait about poverty and how people feel the need to help each other in poverty even when they hate everybody and everything surrounding them.

I can't understand how a cinema student and cinema teachers are not able to see the depth of this film, sure people are ugly and everything is ugly, but thats what this film is all about: hopeless people.

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[deleted]

'this is a portrait about poverty and how people feel the need to help each other'

I can explain: that family live every day trying to set free from each other, they even try to kill each other just to get liberty from all that poverty, but has we watch the movie we can see that is just impossible to escape from poverty, the only chance they could have is the father's money, but the father himself sees that money has something sacred, the only chance to escape from poverty is a sacred thing, but has we know, he prefers to keep the sacred thing that gives him the hope in the future, then use it...

They don't want to, but they are destined to live with each other has a family, even if they hate that destiny....

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[deleted]

Otaku Ariane said: "I am a person with a very dark sense of humour, and I believe I am very open minded"


NOT REALLY

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From now on, Otaku Ariane, I advise you to avoid commedia all'italiana. If you insist on watching Italian movies, clearly you are more the type for "white telephone" movies (telefoni bianci), movies that were made in Italy during the thirties and are all so very, very NICE.

Here is the list of the Italian movies you should never, never watch and avoid at all cost :

I soliti ignoti : nothing funny about misery and analphabetism.
La Grande guerra : nothing funny about the delirious bloodbath of the First World War.
Tutti a casa : nothing funny about the september 8, 1943 chaos that opened as Italy switched sides in the middle of WW2.
Il vigile : nothing funny about the social revenge of a good-for-nothing (Alberto Sordi) who becomes "vigile", that is a road policeman.
Il sorpasso : nothing funny about a timid young man (Jean-Louis Trintignant) being litteraly kidnapped for a crazy car ride on the roads of the Italian economic boom by a selfish, egocentric, dishonest, irresponsible jerk (Vittorio Gassman) who didn't even care to raise his one-of-a-kind teenage daughter (Catherine Spaak).
Divorzio all'italiana : nothing funny about a man (Marcello Mastroianni) plotting to murder his wife because there are no divorce laws !
Il giudizio universale : nothing funny about a man (Alberto Sordi) who sells Napolitan kids for illegal adoption to American tourists.
Il boom : nothing funny about a man (Alberto Sordi) who has to sell one of his eyes in order to maintain his standard of living.
La Marcia su roma : nothing funny about the zany adventures of two fascist morons (Vittorio Gassman and Ugo Tognazzi) on that sadly famous day when king Vittorio-Emanuele III asked Mussolini to form the new government.
La Voglia matta : nothing funny about a 40-year-old businessman (Ugo Tognazzi), estranged from his wife, who embarks in long party/weekend with a bunch of teenagers because he wrongly believes he's got a chance to score with youngish Catherine Spaak.
Anni ruggenti : nothing funny about fascism. But nothing funny about Nino Manfredi? I doubt.
Il federale : nothing funny about fascism (Ugo Tognazzi) versus antifascism (Georges Wilson).
Una vita difficile : nothing funny about an half-courageous, half-coward antifascist freedom fighter (Alberto Sordi) who, once the war is over, goes from one desillusion to the next in back-to-business, let's-forget-everything postwar Italy.
La Parmigiana : nothing funny about a youngish girl from Parma (Catherine Spaak) who just wants to have fun and meet love but becomes a prostitute without fully realising this is where she's going.
I mostri (The Monsters) : nothing funny in those 19 to 20 stories featuring human nature at its worse. Over twenty million of spectators, though. No 2 at the 1963 Italian box office.
I compagni (The organizer) : nothing funny about a miners' strike that tragicomically fails at the beginning of the 20th century.
Il medico della mutua : nothing funny about a doctor (Alberto Sordi) who thinks only of money and exploits the sick and poor to get an even bigger bank account.
La Pecora nera : nothing funny about the story of those twin brothers, one honest and the other a crook, as the honest brother (Vittorio Gassman) ends up in absolute misery while the crook brother (Vittorio Gassman) becomes rich, famous and admired by the entire society.
In nome del popolo italiano : nothing funny about a corrupt, would-be-fascist businessman (Vittorio Gassman) accused of murder by a magistrate (Ugo Tognazzi) who appears to be a courageous, law-and-order straight man - up until there is one more narrative twist all'italiana.
Detenuto in atteso di giudizia : nothing funny about an innocent man (Alberto Sordi) spending five years in prison before even getting an audience on his case.
Per gracia ricevuta : nothing funny about this thirtysomething man (Nino Manfredi) who has been raised in a Catholic monastery after being saved from certain death by a "miracle" when he was a kid, and has now to cope with a society that the monks hadn't exactly prepared him for - to say the least.
Lo scopone scientifico : nothing funny about a billionnaire and her secretary (Bette Davis and Joseph Cotten) playing cards for money with slump city people (Alberto Sordi and Silvana Mangano) who live in not funny misery.
Pane e cioccolata : nothing funny about an ordinary Italian immigrant (Nino Manfredi) who tries to adapt to Switzerland and tragicomically fails.
Profumo di donna : nothing funny about this army officer (Vittorio Gassman) who has become blind and lost his left arm in an accident and believes it entitles him to treat everybody like *beep*
Amici miei : nothing funny about a bunch of fiftysomething men (Ugo Tognazzi, Philippe Noiret, Gastone Moschin, Diulio del Prete, Adolfo Celi) acting like a bunch of teenagers and making all kind of absurd and cruel jokes at everyone else's expense.
Brutti, sporchi e cattivi : nothing funny about the misery - both material and moral - of this Roman slump city family (who judging from the dialect once immigrated from the Mezzogiorno). Especially when the head of the family is played by satirical star Nino Manfredi !
Un borghese piccolo, piccolo : nothing funny about this small, ordinary man (Alberto Sordi) who becomes a kind of neofascist vigilante after his son is murdered by a terrorist's lost bullet.
I nuovi mostri (sequel to I Mostri) : a complete collection of not funny episodes depicting human nature at its worse, hence the title. To be avoided particularly : the sketch where two nouveau-riche-looking parents litteraly sell their teenage daughter to a pornographic movie producer.
Il giocatolo : nothing funny about the self-defence psychosis that seizes an ordinary Italian man (Nino Manfredi) and leads him to become a trigger-happy monster in the context (just like Un Borghese...) of the Years of Lead.
Primo amore : nothing funny about this 61-year-old third rate comedy actor (Ugo Tognazzi) who has no other way to survive than to get into an old-people State house where people are treated like *beep*
L'Ingorgo : nothing funny about a traffic jam that lasts two full days, giving the satirists a tragically good occasion to picture humanity at its worse.
Caffè express : nothing funny about a poor Napolitan man (Nino Manfredi) who has to sell coffee illegally on Italian trains in order to make a living.

Etc, etc, etc.

Stick to White Telephones, Otaku Ariane.





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thats what i always try to explaine to not italian people
what is commedia aall italia
is making fun
out of not funny stuff
which is what italy is about

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Don't get too discouraged, Claudja777 : for I am not Italian at all and I think I understand well enough the tragicomic principle that is at the basis of commedia all'italiana. And believe me : if even I can understand this, then anybody can !

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the movie is not truly comic and I wouldn't classify it to
the comedy genre. Pasolini's Accattone, which also transpires
in a sordid neighborhood of Rome and has similar themes (poverty etc.),
is considered a drama not a comedy and yet it includes some funny scenes
and dialogue. I think the same holds true for Brutti sporchi cattivi, not a
comedy but a drama with some comic scenes.




Eternally walking...

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Please quit film school now. The film world is drowning in mediocrities who want to make more Wonder Bread for the screen.

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This film is a masterpiece, seen it in 77 when I was a kid, and just saw it today again, 30 years later and it still resists the time.
And I´m not Italian, it´s not really about Italian comedy, this is the reality in all ghettos even today, if you watch City of God (violence apart) the environment is not very different and 30 years separate them both.
The film is not about rape, is about being promiscuous, women are not being raped, they are offering little resistance (see scene with the travesty guy and his sister in law, she´s mocking him asking if he changed genre, while he supposedly forces into her ), just because they want to keep their conscience "clean" as they were forced to get into it.

About some teachers at film school refusing to see it, I´m much sorry but I don´t believe that.


Goes around, comes around

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« And I´m not Italian, it´s not really about Italian comedy, this is the reality in all ghettos even today. »

What is truly about Italian comedy in this discussion is the fact that only in Italy did they systematically (from 1958 to 1978) treat subject matters like these through the prism of humour, derision and popular satire. Anywhere else, with some rare exceptions, a subject matter such as daily life in a slump city would have been treated as a very serious drama, as is the case with the incandescent 'City of God'.

Incidentally, 'Brutti, sporchi e cattivi' is not the only commedia all'italiana about slump cities. Luigi Comencini's 'Lo scopone scientifico' (1972), starring Alberto Sordi, Bette Davis, Silvana Mangano and Joseph Cotten, is another immortal classic of the genre, confronting 'super-have' to 'super-have-not'. The result, as usual, is as hilarious as it is sad.

And in fact, during the 50s, jokes about misery, hunger and ignorance were the bread and butter of inumerable Totò farces that marked the 'first wave' of postwar Italian comedy.

I am not Italian either.

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Ok,
I got your point, the idea I was having in this thread was some kind of criticism to italian mentality or something like that.
I agree with you about what you wrote, but I still don´t think this film is portrayed as a comedy like "Lo Scopone.." as you mention.

Cheers

Another day, another idiot...

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Ave Maria! It is a comedy and it is funny because the film captures the absurdity of the decadence. Although I find industrial accidents unfunny, Charlie Chaplin getting caught in the machinery of MODERN TIMES is funny.

Get it, film student?

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Voilà. Chaplin in Modern Times is a good example of how humour can navigate in tragic territory - more so because the style of comic actor Nino Manfredi, though very personal, is clearly influenced by Chaplin's.

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The mean problem, in my opinion, is that the dialogues, written by the great Sergio Citti in pure roman-ghetto-slang, can't be properly translated into English without losing most of their strength.
I'm from Rome, last time I watched this masterpiece I put on english subtitles, just to see, and I felt sorry for foreign viewers who will miss how hysterically funny some scenes are, with their memorable bits of slang.
Actually I understand that, without it, the movie may look only dramatic.
That said, I totally agree with the people above: if you don't like a ferocious self-critic of the Italian way, don't watch classic "Commedia all'italiana". You'll miss a lot but it's your choice.
I'm very proud of how Italians once had the guts to point our fingers to our tragedies, and deal with them with black humor. It happened long ago, now it's all different, Italy is different. What a pity...

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I'm Russian and I watched this movie with English Sub. but I think in Russia we have alot of "Tragic Comedys" as they are called and they are very similar to this movie so I clearly understood the humor here and it was very funny. For a north American audience its hard to grasp the Tragic Comedy genere. Because there very very few movies like that shot in Hollywood.

So I think a cultural background has alot to do with understanding this movie to its full potential.

Tragic Comedys I might sugest in general for the past year or so are - Gran Turino (Eastwood) and In Bruges (Colin Farrell), Some Wes Anderson’s movies.

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« For a north American audience its hard to grasp the Tragic Comedy genere. Because there very very few movies like that shot in Hollywood. »

It is true... and not true. I am a North American, but on Canada's French-speaking market, commedia all'italiana was a hit. This one as well as many others. So, in a way, it's a matter of habit : as for any serial, once you've seen three to four episodes, oups all of a sudden you're hooked for good.

The genre is making a return, I'm told, with the movies of a certain Paolo Virzi, but since then Canada has been stupidly decreted "domestic market" for the Americans, which means that no foreign mass-entertainment passes our borders anymore, only arthouse chic for the happy few. Porca miseria, as they say.

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Boris Vian said that humor was the politeness of despair.

I think this could apply to any commedia all'italiana.

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It seemed more an allegory, for the country of Italy. Just as there are too many living in the house, too many poor people in the country. Meanwhile the government, like the father, doesn't help the people, but just buys itself whatever it likes. The people try to revolt against the government (poisoning), but it doesn't work and some get punished. A very old story.

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